10 July 2009
Maputo — The general director of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral arm of the Mozambican civil service, Felisberto Naife, has dismissed as "absurd" the attempt by the former rebel movement Renamo to prosecute STAE over irregularities in the current voter registration.
Renamo has lodged a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office claiming that STAE is violating the constitutional right of citizens to vote, by "falsifying" the voter registration. Among the Renamo allegations is that STAE is deliberately using obsolete equipment, and has prioritized areas where the ruling Frelimo party is popular to the detriment of those that Renamo regards as its strongholds.
Cited in Friday's issue of the daily newsheet "Canal de Mocambique", Naife said that the real problems had to do with mechanical breakdowns.
"Renamo raises problems concerned with burnt-out transformers, generators that don't work, batteries that malfunction, and broken printers", he said. "These problems are solvable. And they are being solved as time passes".
Accessories to replace those that have broken down have been sent to all the provinces, he said.
He added that Renamo's correct procedure was to complain in the first instance to the National Elections Commission (CNE), and not to the Public Prosecutor's office. "The CNE has not yet received a formal or informal communication about this complaint", said Naife. "Renamo must know that all political parties should, by law, take part so that this process runs smoothly, or so that, if problems exist they should be discussed in the forum envisaged by law, so as to find the respective solutions".
Renamo has also claimed that are more people to be registered as new voters than the figure of 483,150 used by STAE (this is on top of the 9.3 million who were registered in 2007 and 2008).
Thus STAE's target for the northern province of Nampula is 97,467 new voters. But Renamo claims there are 123,300 potential voters that need to be registered. A much more serious discrepancy occurs with the neighbouring province of Zambezia, where the STAE target is 90,055, but Renamo claims there are 279,000 people to be registered.
Naife regarded the Renamo figures as ridiculous. "I don't know where they got such projections from", he said.
For STAE works with figures provided by the National Statistics Institute (INE), based on the 2007 population census. There is no other reliable source of figures on the Mozambican population.
Pf/ (408)
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